The Select Works of Charles Walker includes The Ritual Reason Why and four other volumes from the liturgist who sought to help his generation rediscover the function behind the Church’s forms. Walker wrote in the wake of the Oxford Movement, and his work addresses what he saw as a growing disconnect in the popular consciousness between ceremony and sincere worship. In Walker’s mind, many mistakenly saw Church ceremony as beautiful or salvific in itself, and others viewed Church tradition with cynicism. Walker’s work defends centuries-old ceremonial worship. He hoped to lead both the cynic and the legalist to the truth that liturgy uniquely expresses, for “ritual divorced from truth is of all things the most melancholy . . . a shadow without substance.”